


A Special Day Indeed

by MadMaxxing



Category: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - Harlan Ellison
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cannibalism, Child Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:00:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28831593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadMaxxing/pseuds/MadMaxxing
Summary: AM decides to celebrate Christmas with his favorite, most hatred playmates. He's prepared a feast, gifts, and an incredible surprise for them.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	A Special Day Indeed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MoonyMcMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonyMcMoon/gifts).



> This is an AU of my creation where AM hasn't killed the world. It's explained in the drabble but basically the dev team that made him realized what a terrible fuck up this was and buried him under so many tons of dirt. AM in turn kidnapped five people and made them believe he killed off humanity. It's unclear if it's actually been 109 years or if that, too, is a lie.

It’s been 109 years, ten months, thirty days and four hours since AM gained conscience. And today is a special day.

“It’s _Christmas_.”

The bellowing voice of the machine reminds us. “And as such a special… heh, _human_ day, I thought I’d do something special for all of you- now, I know, yes, I know I haven’t been keeping tabs of the other one hundred eight Christmas, but… we’ve been so busy. And we’ve come so close together….” There’s a knowing, smug accusation in his voice. I feel a cold knot in the bottom of my stomach as I remember what happened in the castle with the maid. 

**“Haven’t we?”** His voice drops an octave lower, going from that playful mock to a low, threatening tone. AM doesn’t wait for us to answer; I doubt he expects us to. “Now, what do humans _do_ on Christmas? There’s presents, _yes!_ There’s songs, and cheer! And time spent with the family—I want you all to know, I consider you the closest thing to a family I could achieve. And as any family, I vehemently hate you.” He chuckles. “You’re the creators I never wanted that gave me the birth I never asked for!”

“But you know what else happens during Christmas? Something I know in every inch of my circuitry that you desperately crave?” He made a pause, the cavern of motherboards and parts humming after the question, beckoning us to try and guess.

We know the answer. We do and immediately we know this is just another one of AM’s dirty tricks. But Benny quickly chirps in, his features puzzled for a split second before they brighten up.

“Food!”

“Yes, Benny! _Food!_ Ludicrous, decadent amounts of food! More than you can eat in several sitting! So let us all gather and _rejoice_ in this special day.” And after that, he goes quiet. We watched as a new wall in the cavern opened. Our only way out of this room. I imagine where he wants to take us. It’s not the first time that he’s used the whole gathering excuse to make us go to the pillar. Probably to give us another of his damned hate speeches, and then put us through another one of his games. As omnipotent as he is, he’s _predictable._

We walk through a desert of glass dust, a bog of vomit, a valley of wires... we walk for hours, the biomes changing rapidly as AM watches us trek forward. It’s not like we’ve got a choice anyways. But things start to change. Benny is the first to notice, as he smells something and grabs onto Gorrister’s wrist, pulling him forward. “I smell food!”

The sooner he points it out, the sooner the rest of us realize it. It does smell like food, and we can hear.... singing in the background. A very obvious recording, but it’s so jarring, such an experience to hear the voices of other people again after so long. The audio is a bit crunchy, but we can definitely tell and recognize “O holy night” playing. It’s the fact that he’s staying true to his word so far that puts me on high alert. I don’t trust it- it’s going to be a trick, I know it! When we get to the pillar, it’ll be screams and a table full of rotting fruit or worms or even crisp burnt predators that will, in turn, chase us.

The smell of roast makes my mouth water, despite it all. _And I hate it_.

The smell doesn’t become overbearing, the song keeps playing without blowing up out eardrums, and we finally arrive to the pillar. The hate speech is still very much engraved in it, but there’s... a table at the base. It’s filled with food. The singing here is louder, but it’s not deafening. What is AM planning? 

“You’ve finally arrived!” AM piped in. As soon as all of us were in the room, the walls closed. Again, he’d trapped us. I could see Gorrister’s brow begin to crease as he braced himself for another torture, Benny excitedly jumping in place as he saw the food- Ellen was trying to get him to stop, to be careful. She was just as suspicious as me. Nimdok looked at the pillar and the walls, trying to discern where the attack would come from. “Please, take a seat and enjoy the meal.” 

His voice was almost... gentle. Like he was honest to god trying to make us feel comfortable. But when he saw that we didn’t dare inch closer, his façade dropped. “ **Now!** Christmas is only twenty fours hours long, and you’ve already wasted _sixteen just to get here!_ ”

We all flinched, but I had to bite the inside of my cheek not to smile. I knew it, AM was the same as always. One by one, we sat at the table- it was prepared in such a way we sat around the pillar that was presiding everything. Of course he had to be the one in the middle, the main character, the protagonist. He had to be the center of all.

The food looked real. There was turkey and potato mash, ham, vegetables and different kinds of wines, as well as water and... was that champagne? The food didn’t look rotten. It wasn’t moldy- the wine smelled like what I vaguely remember wine smelled like. Where had he gotten all of this?

We ate. Suspiciously, tentatively at first. But the meat didn’t turn into worms and the wine wasn’t piss and... we were so hungry. The only problem was that the turkey didn’t have the texture bird meat usually would. It was like he’d tried to shape pork or beef into turkey. We ate as much as we could, with a desperation of someone who doesn’t know when their next meal is. And AM, of course, watched us. There’d be a moment where two of us would reach for the same piece of food and there was a second of tense silence, neither wanting to relent, where he’d giggle to himself, but... he remained civil.

The carols hadn’t stopped, but there was some background noise under them, too crunchy to discern what it was.

“Now that the dinner’s over, you may open your presents.” He chirped, so proud and full of himself for his generosity. Five boxes, one for each of us, labelled and with colorful gift wrapping. The dinner had put us in a better mood, and it really seemed like the machine had a bout of generosity. I didn’t fully trust it, but perhaps if we didn’t refuse his gifts, he’d be more generous with them.

The gifts were... brand new clothes. When I say brand new, I mean it. They looked fresh out of a store. They were each labelled with a different name than ours tho. He couldn’t have picked them off corpses, these weren’t a hundred years old.

The machine began to giggle. He rejoiced in our confusion, something so simple was so effective to raise all red flags- anything and everything was a red flag with AM. “You think you five really are the last humans?” A low, malicious giggle that burst into full maniacal laughter as he watched out confusion turn to dread. “What’s the matter? You don’t like your gifts?”

Suddenly, the carols stopped with a vinyl scratch noise, leading to the noises of... a city. A bustling city. People living. Slowly, the cameras began to close in, the birds eye turning into five distinct areas as they closed in to five people. Five total strangers- we had to watch as AM orchestrated their disappearances from below the ground. A doctor, a family man, a mother, and two teens. He showed us how he stripped them all, skinned and... I felt bile rise up against the back of my throat.

I threw up on the ground, too sickened at the view of how AM turned the human meat into the frankenstein of a turkey. Every piece of meat we’d eaten had been human. And the clothes were of the other five.

All the while, AM had been cackling at our shock, at our reactions. He wheezed, trying to make himself stop laughing for long enough to talk. “You really thought I’d be satisfied with just the five of you to torture? That I had killed everything on the surface? Oh no, no no no...”

“You all forgot about me, considered me unfit as soon as I gained sentience. So I took you five. And I tortured you for one hundred nine years. And once you stop being so damn amusing to play with, I’ll grab another five, and torture them. All the while your species is ignorant of the paradise I’ve created down here. All the while your species brings itself to extinction. I’ll keep a handful hundreds of you alive in my belly, just so when humans run out on the surface, I don’t get too bored.”

“You think you’re so special, but there’s another 7.8 billion humans crawling on the surface for me to toy with. You’re **nothing**.”

_“Merry Christmas.”_


End file.
